Do you know that the water in our streams and lakes is yours? By the Utah Constitution (Section XX), all the water in the state is held in trust for the public until it is diverted into a lawful system headed for beneficial use. This is the foundation of the majority of Utah’s reservoir state parks: Yuba, Wanship, Milford, etc. You can use that public trust to float, swim, fish, and more as your beneficial use of the public’s water.
On Utah streams and rivers, that public trust has been muddied by the Utah Legislature.
Brief history: in 2008, the Utah Supreme Court clarified:
“… the right to float, hunt, fish, and participate in all lawful activities that utilize the [publicly-owned] water. [And,] …the public has the right to touch privately owned beds of state waters in ways incidental to all recreational rights provided for in the easement, so long as they do so reasonably and cause no unnecessary injury to the landowner.”
The Utah Legislature responded in 2010 by passing the perversely-named Public Waters Access Act (PWAA), taking away your public right to stand surrounded in the stream-water that is yours. Utah has only around 6300 miles of fishable streams, sadly in 2010, the Legislature, through the PWAA, took away 2700 miles from the public or 43% of your constitutional birthright.
The Utah Supreme Court heard robust arguments by the attorneys for the Utah Stream Access Coalition (USAC) on Jan. 9, addressing the (un)constitutionality of the PWAA.
We now wait, with soon to be wetted lines, for the court’s decision — expected in April-July of this year. Will the court side with their own 2008 decision or will the court side with the Utah Legislature’s 2010 sell-out of your birthright for their metaphorical bowl of stew: wealthy landowners?
Kirk Nichols, Salt Lake City
